Topic: Project "Backlog Eradication" - Clearin' out the pile o' shame

[UltimatePartyBear]

Have you controlled the Antelions yet?  That's the Highlight of the game pretty much.  If you don't like it by then you probably aren't going to like it.

No, I don't believe I have. I think I'm still early on, trying to exit the sewers at the point where I am at. I haven't seen any different kinds of enemies besides the Combine officers and their annoying security robots.

Sounds like you're in the second chapter. Combat starts getting more interesting during the first vehicle section, IMO, but it won't set itself apart until you get the gravity gun. You'll either love or hate Ravenholm and the journey up the coast, but the rest is consistently awesome.

[Ceric]

Have you controlled the Antelions yet?  That's the Highlight of the game pretty much.  If you don't like it by then you probably aren't going to like it.

No, I don't believe I have. I think I'm still early on, trying to exit the sewers at the point where I am at. I haven't seen any different kinds of enemies besides the Combine officers and their annoying security robots.

Sounds like you're in the second chapter. Combat starts getting more interesting during the first vehicle section, IMO, but it won't set itself apart until you get the gravity gun. You'll either love or hate Ravenholm and the journey up the coast, but the rest is consistently awesome.

I got tired of the vehicles real quick.  They could have cut those sections in half.  I liked the on foot stuff for the most part but, I didn't like the last chapter because its not nearly as challenging as it should be or the chapter right in front of it.

[UltimatePartyBear]

When I mentioned the first vehicle section, I meant the bits where you get out and fight.  Like the part that introduced grenades. I replayed that over and over trying to get great grenade kills.

[Killer_Man_Jaro]

Kirby's Epic Yarn

Status update: In Snow Land. The last level I did involved moving through cabins made from giant mittens. The music in this world is joyously Christmassy.

For now, I'll just say that, as a latecomer, I knew a lot of what to expect going into Epic Yarn, and it hasn't disappointed. 'Delightful' is undoubtedly the word of choice. The fact that you cannot die is really mitigated by the variety, the fluidness of controlling Kirby and the many ways in which the sublime art style works into the levels. I even look forward to getting back out to the hub, so I can watch the latest animation that will give me access to the next door. I would prefer it if the gem multiplier at the end of each stage wasn't so generous, as without it, there would be a greater challenge to obtaining the gold medals, but oh well. Difficulty most certainly is not what the game is about.

[Killer_Man_Jaro]

Mario vs Donkey Kong: Mini-Land Mayhem

All done now. To reiterate, very well done, especially considering this is the third go-around for the Minis concept. There's also a lot of levels in this game - I still have a handful of the unlockable extra-hard ones to complete - so if you're concerned about value, as the previous game was on DSiWare, don't be.

There was one last point I wanted to go over. Literally everyone, when discussing this or either of its predecessors, seems to immediately draw the comparison to Lemmings. I get where they're coming from, but they honestly aren't that close. Firstly, in Lemmings, there is always a single exit goal for your little guys, whereas in Mario vs DK, you might have mini Marios, mini Toads and mini Peaches, each with their own gate. Second, interaction with objects plays a much greater role in Mario vs DK. The stages are dynamic enough that you can't just set up and let the Minis run on autopilot, so you'll be constantly tapping and drawing, deleting pieces and replacing them elsewhere. Plus, in Mini-Land Mayhem, every Mini has to arrive at the end; the penalty for accidentally destroying one is the Game Over screen. With Lemmings, it's really just about equipping the little guys with the necessary tools to win, and the survival quotas are often quite forgiving.

In short, if anybody has ever thought "I don't like Lemmings, therefore I won't enjoy this", give it a try. The similarities between the two series have been exaggerated.

[Mop it up]

Donkey Kong '94

Status update: Stuck in a level of world 3, unsure how to reach the key. Convinced I need to read the electronic manual that comes with Virtual Console games. I think I'm having an issue of transparency with some of Mario's interactions with the levels.

You can also wait on the title screen and soon it will demonstrate all the moves which Mario can perform.

This game is a first for quite a few things, not just an abundance of lives. Mario's moves from Super Mario 64 are clearly inspired by this game, most notably the side flip and triple jump. It's also the first time Mario can be hurt from falling, something which otherwise exists only in the 3D games. Lastly, it is the first time Mario's deaths became more gruesome, a trend which would continue with the 3D installments. Simply falling off the screen is a thing of the past.

All that said, I really enjoyed the game, and you should stick with it. I found it much better than Mario vs Donkey Kong on the GBA, mostly because of the lack of mini-Marios. Though not overusing switches probably helps too.

[NWR_insanolord]

Mario can be hurt by falling because he could be hurt by falling in the original Donkey Kong arcade game, though '94 is a lot more forgiving about it.

[Mop it up]

Oh yeah, I always forget about that, since I've barely played the original. Funny how I'm a huge Mario fan and I don't even own his debut game, Donkey Kong. And it isn't like I don't like it; I first played it in Donkey Kong 64 and actually enjoyed getting the coin you have to earn from playing it.

[Killer_Man_Jaro]

Might & Magic: Clash of Heroes

Status update: Decent headway into the Haven campaign.

Good fun, though I am waiting for it to ramp up in difficulty. Like any good puzzler, you develop a language, so to speak, of how to recognise patterns and move your units in the most effective way, so as not to waste turns. To lay this out, Clash of Heroes is a grid-based puzzle game laid on top of an RPG. It retains the typical trappings, such as towns filled with NPCs to talk to, level ups, exp points and items that have special effects on your units, although I haven't found a great deal of use for the latter so far.

Really, the core of Clash of Heroes is the battle system, where on the touch screen, you attempt to match units of the same colour in columns of three (which primes them for offence) or rows of three (which primes them for defence) and then send them to attack the enemy army on the top screen. Depending on the units in play, you can also create more powerful formations e.g. 2 units behind an Elite, or a square of 4 behind a Champion. Now that I've learned the basic pattern recognition though, it does somewhat feel like I'm going through the motions. I get the impression that the AI of the opponents is deliberately holding back - I never had much trouble throughout the entire Sylvan campaign, and in the next one, the computer player still acts stupidly sometimes. For example, making a line of three to attack, but not actually giving the order to attack for two turns, for no reason that I can discern.

[Killer_Man_Jaro]

Bit.Trip FLUX

Of every game in my backlog, this may be the one that gets crossed off the list without me actually completing it. The final stage is so, so, so bloody difficult, perhaps it is beyond my abilities. I'll probably go back to the game some time down the road - it could work out like BEAT, which I eventually finished a year and a half after I first obtained it.

So I might have exaggerated this. For whatever reason, I booted up FLUX yesterday, and I must have been in The Zone. That's right, I finally conquered the last level, Catharsis, which fits because that is what you'll feel when you're done. Well, I say that, but it felt like I was hanging by a thread, and I did go into Nether twice, only to come out of it on the edge of my seat. Yet after all the insanity in the closing minutes, it ends with an anti-climatic 'boss', where you simply bounce a single beat against a wall for a couple of minutes. Then, once that's done, you get a strange, calming epilogue section - I've read in interviews that this series has a grand narrative chronicling Commander Video's life, but that is way over my head.

If I had to rank the games I've played in the series, it would be as follows:
Runner -> Void -> Beat = Flux
I never picked up Core or Fate, just because the reception was kind of mixed on those two.

[Killer_Man_Jaro]

Billy Hatcher and the Giant Egg

Inspired by a mention in the current RetroActive poll thread, I went back to Billy Hatcher. It's been several years, so I decided to begin a new file. On my old file, I had gotten to the Sand Ruin world, which I think is near the end, and on my new file, I'm up to the second stage of Circus Park. Almost caught up, then.

I'll go over it in more detail once I've finished. To give my abridged thoughts, this is actually better than I remember. It shares quite a lot in common with a 3D Mario game, in spite of Sonic Team's involvement, even down to some of the level objectives, like collecting X number of Red Coins, racing this character to the end, etc. The unique feature about the game is the interaction with eggs - rolling them around, making them bigger using fruit, crushing enemies with them and then finally hatching them with an exclamation of the incredibly Engrish "Cookoo-doon-doo!" to obtain elemental pets or power-ups. It's a nifty system, and while holding an egg, you can pull off various manoeuvres, such as a ground pound that bounces Billy way up and a turbo boost that sends him careening. The only potentially annoying quirk that you need to be aware of is that to keep hold of an egg, you have maintain momentum, so sharp movements with the control stick are a no-go, as they will disengage Billy from the egg. It's just something you get used to after a little while; for example, if you wish to turn around, rather than pushing the stick in the other direction, steer the egg round in a U-turn.

[Killer_Man_Jaro]

Machinarium

Thanks to the highly affordable Humble Indie Bundle #3, all of a sudden I have 10 more (hopefully small) games added to the backlog. I started with Machinarium, a point-and-click adventure that I've had my eye on for a while. It hasn't quite gotten its hooks in yet, but I'm still early on, so there's still plenty of time for it to grow on me.

The game's personality certainly hits it out of the park right from the outset. Your cute little robot protagonist holds much of the same charm as Pixar's WALL-E, the aesthetic is very well realised and the story looks like it is heading in some interesting directions. It seems there may be a conspiracy afoot in this weird mechanical world...


As for what you actually do, Machinarium is traditional point-&-click fare, interacting with objects, using inventory items, solving puzzles, the usual. The game is clever about how it handles hints, as your robot's thought bubbles will show the primary objective of the puzzle and give small clues as to the next step. Where I take issue with it is in some of the design anachronisms. For a modern title in this genre, it does take an unfortunate number of old-school tropes. Sometimes, it's hard to identify what in the environment can be interacted with. This might be seen as a compliment to the consistency and the organic nature of the art style, but I'm finding it to be a bit of a nuisance. In that same vein, because of the lack of text, nothing is labelled and as a result, there have been a couple of instances where I picked up an item that I wasn't actually sure what it was and how it could be utilised. I imagine that, for people who played a lot of this kind of game back in the day, these are standard, but as a relatively recent convert to the adventure game genre, they're niggling annoyances.

[Oblivion]

Glad to see you finished Flux. One of the only Bit.Trip games I actually beat. The other one was Void.

[Killer_Man_Jaro]

Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective

Status update [SPOILER ALERT]: Finally started this up today and played to the scene where Lynne is killed (again) by the "murder machine". Craziness.

The lineage of this game can apparently be traced back to the Ace Attorney series, but whereas I became irritated with Phoenix Wright due to the obtuse logic required for many of the court scenes, I am finding the thought processes needed for Ghost Trick to be very satisfying. For those uninitiated, Ghost Trick, in a nutshell, is about the spirit of a man named Sissel trying to find out the cause of his death, which plays out through levels in which he possesses objects to solve puzzles - generally, the puzzle is to avert somebody's death. There's a nice variety to the scenarios, both in terms of locations and use of items, and although it hasn't been all that difficult up to where I've got to, I sense that the sequence of events could get complicated. When I first that the game was predicated to a large extent on rewinding scenes, I was concerned that it might descend into trial-and-error quickly, but at least so far, that hasn't been a problem. In fact, in the couple of instances where I have had to rewind time, it's been a great revelation on what I have to do.

Of course, it helps that the much-hyped rotoscoped animation is positively sublime. I went in with high expectations because I've heard a great deal about how smooth it is, and I was still blown away by the expressiveness of every single character's movements. Obviously, it wouldn't be so striking if everyone didn't walk really extravagantly, but that just adds to the game's whimsical style.

Speaking of which, credit is also owed to the script. The writing has been consistently humorous and entertaining, particularly in the early level with the dog, Missile. It's so fun - he talks just like you'd imagine a little dog would!

[Killer_Man_Jaro]

Sonic Colours

Polished that one off this afternoon (the Wii version is what we're talking about here), excepting a handful of the Simulator levels. Anyway, if I'd played this in 2010, I reckon it would've taken the 'Biggest Surprise' award, because it's really quite good. Not without some demerits, but definitely worth playing. I don't blame you for being apprehensive. Seriously though, it's a fun Sonic game.

The main area where it excels above its predecessors is that Sonic Colours has a much smoother feel to its control scheme, and moreover, the levels are, for the most part, designed around the controls. I had the misfortune of being gifted Sonic Heroes back in the Gamecube days, and with that game, not only did Sonic move wildly, but the levels were made with cheap death traps that were far too easy to go zooming into because of how uncontrollable the characters were. In Colours, the controls and the levels are way more synonymous with each other. I was able to anticipate what was ahead of me much better, plus Sonic can now drift around corners. The powerslide is unfortunately not always reliable - I'd say about 80% of the time, it's fine, but occasionally, it over-steers and cuts your momentum, and I didn't know how I had done it differently when that happened.


As with all 3D Sonic games, there's a fair amount of running straight ahead into the screen, where your input is fairly limited, although it seems there's less of it than some of the others. Sensibly enough, the 3D platforming is usually pretty simple, while the twitchy stuff is reserved for the 2D sections. The good thing about Colours is that, during parts of levels when the movement is somewhat on-rails, it makes a spectacle. The graphics are bright, vibrant and flashy, which does a lot to sustain those sections.

The big additions for this game, of course, are the Wisp power-ups. There's 8 different species in total, and the ones that are most enjoyable are those that let you explore for little nooks, with the Rocket and the Drill having the broadest applications in the levels they feature in. Essentially, this allows you to play a level multiple times and take completely separate routes to the end. For example, I might go through a stage and think "Hm, I wonder if I could have used the Rocket at that point", then I'd try it and find a new path with a Red Ring (needed to unlock secret levels). I really like that aspect of it. Some of the other Wisps, like the Block, are less interesting because it's blatantly obvious as to where they must be used.

There's a couple of sticking points that detracted from my enjoyment. At the top of the list is the perfunctory story elements, specifically the voice acting. I kept reading that they had brought in an entirely new voice cast that's supposed to be much better, but that's not the impression I got. I still found the characters to be just as grating and cringe-inducing as before. Further down the list is the pointless quick-time events that come into play every time Sonic launches off a ramp. You just hammer the A Button for a few seconds; it adds nothing to the game.

Regardless, I believe Sonic Colours is worth picking up. It is a very surprising instalment in that franchise.

[Killer_Man_Jaro]

Machinarium

Not the longest of games, as it turns out. 6 hours, maybe?

My final thoughts are rosier than what I said a few days ago. In the early going, the puzzles are enclosed and take place in single rooms, but once you break out into the city, there are lots of areas you can visit at any time and multiple objectives that can be tackled in a fairly non-linear fashion. So much so that it is sometimes difficult to keep track of everything and how they all link together. The other important development of the gameplay once you're in the city is that a larger proportion of the brainteasers are mechanical, engineering problems. It's still a point-and-click adventure, so naturally there continues to be 'Find X item, use at Y' scenarios, but there are also many puzzles based on moving things around i.e. sliding panels, connecting coloured dots, redirecting the flow of water through a pipe network, and so on. These are closer to Professor Layton puzzles.

In terms of all the other components of Machinarium, I'm pretty much where I was last time. The game is amusing in that quiet, pantomime kind of way. Moreover, the hand-drawn art style is absolutely wonderful - I saw that it won the award for Excellence in Visual Design at the most recent Independent Games Festival, and deservingly so. I know that creating graphics by hand is impractical for time and effort, but still, I wish more games would do it. It's a shame, though, that these visuals are a bit of a double-edged sword, in that because of how consistent they are in every screen, key items that you need to progress blend right in with the scenery. Whenever I got stuck in this game, it was generally because I was missing an item that I would come upon by chance later. They really don't stand out at all.

[Killer_Man_Jaro]

Osmos
Another of the Humble Indie Bundle games. I didn't complete everything, I simply played enough to unlock all the zones and made sure to sample each one. There's just not really enough to Osmos to sustain it.

To give the overview, you are a cellular organism within a cell culture. The primary objective in every level is to fly into and absorb smaller organisms, avoid bigger organisms and eventually grow into the biggest in the culture. Strangely, it's controlled entirely by the mouse - you click around the organism to propel it, scroll to zoom in & out, and that's about it. However, whenever the organism is propelled, small pieces of its mass will break off, which means that moving in subtle increments and never going too long without absorbing is strongly advised. It's definitely a weird scheme, and it can be difficult to reduce momentum once you've built it up.

The levels are divided into three separate chains, known as Sentient, Force and Ambient respectively. Sentient is the most basic, free-form mode of the three - everything's kind of random and unstructured, and from level to level, there's very little development in what you must do beyond 'Become Huge'. Force is essentially the same, the only difference being that instead of moving freely, all of the organisms are in orbit of large bodies of matter than cannot be absorbed. You can still guide your organism to a lesser extent, but it will follow an orbit on autopilot.

Lastly, Ambient is the more puzzle-based mode, and because of that, it's by far my favourite. Unlike the other two modes, the Ambient levels have some semblance of structured design to them, as usually, the other organisms are placed at specific points around the culture and do not move. All of a sudden, the method of accessing the little organisms becomes quite strategic. It introduces a nuanced technique where you have to expel some mass into a larger organism, which will gradually push it into even larger organisms, then you can swoop in and absorb it once it has shrunk sufficiently. These stages are way more interesting to me, although they still suffer a bit from being much too slow.

[Killer_Man_Jaro]

Super Meat Boy

What a relief! After extreme patience and perseverance pushed me through a little over 3000 deaths, I finally conquered the light world of Super Meat Boy... with keyboard controls, no less. I found my old computer joypad, but for some reason, it caused the game to be incredibly buggy, ruling out that option. I didn't really want to shell out for a 360 pad, so I thought "Screw it, I just want to play this damn game!" and decided to just grin and bear the keyboard scheme. Luckily, I was able to get used to it, but it never fully clicked, and I'm willing to attribute a few hundred of those deaths to imprecise movement on the arrow keys and the sometimes unresponsive space bar.

Again, I have to reiterate how disappointing it is that the PC version did not receive the care and polish it needed on the default controls, because in almost all other regards, Super Meat Boy is an fantastically intense 2D platformer. The insidious difficulty can be the source of much frustration, there's no doubt about that. From the start of Hell onwards, it becomes very demanding. However, all the way down to specific platform placement and patterns that the hazards move in, the levels have a brilliant fluidity and sense of flow to them. If you are quick to react and master the timing, it is possible to pull off seemingly impossible feats, which are necessary for all the extras, like target times, collectible bandages and secret warp zones. It's thrilling stuff.

I also can't fault the breadth of content available. Even after completing it, I've still got a whole load of dark world levels, more characters to unlock and the Super Meat World user-generated hub to dive into. The latter might be hit or miss - from my brief sampling of it so far, it's become apparent that in the wrong hands, the level editor can produce some truly evil, twisted designs.

To finish off, I must give special mention to the soundtrack. The songs have a unique modern-retro flavour to them, mixing distortion guitar riffs and choral elements with synths and electronic sounds more akin to old 8-bit and 16-bit titles. More than anything, the music is what kept me sane in the later areas when I was dying left, right and centre. Throw it on your iPod or mp3 player ASAP.

[Killer_Man_Jaro]

Revenge of the Titans

Currently at the end of the Mars chain of levels. Titans are everywhere.

Revenge of the Titans is a fairly traditional tower defence game. There's a base, you build various towers to protect it as swarms and swarms of aliens march across the map. It's kinda fun in small doses, I suppose. The main issue with it is one I have with the majority of entries in this overpopulated genre: the game doesn't develop in an interesting way. As you move forward, it sends larger Titans, and you deal with them by researching more powerful turrets from an unnecessarily convoluted upgrade web. That sort of progression is really not that compelling. I still feel that Plants vs Zombies is the only tower defence title that manages to escape from this slippery slope, encouraging you to employ different strategies every mission.

In a word, meh. Haven't decided if I'll try to finish this one or cut it short.

[UltimatePartyBear]

I watched the trailer for that one during an indie game binge on Steam.  I liked the retro look of it and only avoided buying it by reminding myself that I hate tower defense games.

[Killer_Man_Jaro]

A Boy and His Blob

All wrapped up, with the majority of the secret levels done. I really wish dying and retrying on the final boss was handled better, but alas, it's over now.

I had great fun with A Boy & His Blob, while also observing some room for improvement along the way (fingers are crossed for a sequel one day). The puzzles are, for the most part, well-thought out and varied and the hand-drawn art and smooth-as-butter animation are a delight, if slightly repetitious with the backgrounds. It adds new jelly beans into the mix at a good, consistent clip, even when you're deep into the game, keeping it fresh and maintaining that sense of experimentation with the different transformations.

It's especially interesting when you contrast the structure of the regular levels with that of the challenge levels. Instead of a load-out of 7 or 8 jelly beans to mess with, these primarily focus on one or two. In many cases, they use elements that are similar to the normal stages, but with a more limited set of beans, something as straightforward as, let's say, getting up to a high ledge, which would be easy with the trampoline, must be approached very differently. In the very first world, one of these secret levels gives you nothing but the anvil, seemingly one of the simpler transformations. However, I was impressed by just how many uses there were for it - they really wrung the anvil for all its worth in that level.

As for areas that need to be fine-tuned should a follow-up be produced, the means for keeping the boy and the blob together is high on the list. The fact that the balloon transformation exists at all is testament to how much of a problem it gets to be. If they cannot program a blob intelligent enough to jump over walls and such, give me a function that warps him to the boy immediately. On another note, I don't mind that the aiming controls are mapped to the analog stick, but I would prefer it if the trajectory lines were more accurate, as I found that the line didn't account for how the bean would bounce particularly well.

Then, of course, we have to talk about the boss battles. Some aspects of the bosses are great, and other aspects are infuriating. I like the idea of a puzzle-based boss fight, especially in the way it makes you turn the enemy's attack against itself. Plus, in terms of animation, I think the pinnacle of it is in the bosses; they move so fluidly. Unfortunately, damaging them tends to require precision. I already mentioned to problems with the aiming, but when you're under no pressure to move quickly. During boss encounters, there's a tonne of pressure to do so, and it's immensely frustration. Furthermore, because it's so much easier to be killed in these sections of the game, it either needs to have checkpoints after you've hurt the boss or it needs to restart quicker. The last boss is particularly onerous in that regard - I can't believe you have to run down the corridor to him every single time.

[Killer_Man_Jaro]

Kirby's Epic Yarn

Finished up with all treasures, all gold medals and about a third of the perfunctory apartment minigame stuff.

As I powered through the fabric version of Dream Land, I was struck by a thought: would this game still be fun and enticing if the graphical style was standard fare e.g. polygonal graphics like the upcoming Kirby Wii game? It's a difficult question. I think it would lose some of its appeal without the yarn look. I get a kick out of the smallest visual tricks, like the burnt fabric in that one lava level and the cotton wool snowballs. At the same time, there's a fair argument to be made for the game being so entrenched in that aesthetic, a lot of the play mechanics wouldn't make sense without it. The art is, in many ways, in service of the level design, and I feel that's what I enjoy about Kirby's Epic Yarn.

One aspect of the game that would be awesome no matter what the style is the soundtrack. Piano is the main flavour of the music, with shades of Charlie Brown in the melodies. Even better, though, is that there's very little repetition of tracks - unlike some games, where there's a theme to the whole world, Epic Yarn mixes it up constantly.

I'll close this out with a more philosophical musing. Taken as a sandbox, there's some enjoyment to be had with the traditional Kirby platformer, but it appears that, whenever they remove the Kirby staples (infinite jumping and inhaling enemies), his games become more interesting. Case in point: this, Power Paintbrush, and the soon-to-be-released Mass Attack.

[Oblivion]

Is it too easy?

[Killer_Man_Jaro]

Is it too easy?

Hm. Well, the fact that you cannot be killed means that you'll at no point have trouble just completing the levels. And I would say that it's often too easy to achieve gold medals, mainly because of a score multiplier at the end of every level that can turn pitiful scores into a shiny gold.

If it wasn't apparent, you shouldn't play Epic Yarn to be challenged. The most important thing is that, whilst it is very easy, it's not boring. I had a lot of fun with it, and finding the hidden items involves a decent level of exploration. Outstanding visuals, fantastic music, it's a class package. But yes, you will not find it difficult at any point.

[Oblivion]

Good. I'm usually a fan of easy mode.